Commissioners approved the historic regulation on the grounds that noncompetes stifle competition for workers. A legal challenge is all but certain.

The FTC’s three Democratic members were in favor of adopting the regulation, while its two Republican members were against it.

…

“The FTC estimated that the ban would boost wages by between $400 billion and $488 billion over 10 years.”

Employers are required to tell people that existing noncompetes are void:

The new rule makes it illegal for employers to include the agreements in employment contracts and requires companies with active noncompete agreements to inform workers that they are void. The agency received more than 26,000 comments about the rule after it was proposed some 16 months ago. The rule will take effect after 120 days, although business groups have promised to challenge it in court, which could delay implementation.

New York Times coverage for comparison

  • @11111one11111
    22•1 month ago

    Wait, the entirety of the FTC is 5 fucking people?

    • @FlowVoidEnglish
      20•1 month ago

      The FTC has about 1000 employees, including five commissioners.

      • @[email protected]
        2•1 month ago

        Is that similar to our Supreme Court? Could conservatives stack that court and just destroy everything?

        • @[email protected]OP
          11•1 month ago

          FTC commissioners have a limited term of office, and no more than 3 are allowed to be members of one party.

          A future Republican President could in fact change this by appointing a Republican majority. This makes it incredibly important to not allow that. That means not just planning to vote, but checking your registration to make sure it hasn’t been purged or in need of an update because you moved or changed names, volunteering and donating

          • @11111one11111
            1•12 days ago

            Government ran entities are the bane of my existence but the FTC has always been a seemingly efficient and unbiased regulatory commission. They’re fucked when it comes to regulating the tech industry but still less fucked than anyother boomer politician who vote on its laws.

            I am a kid with the popcorn bucket entranced by the current and looming topic of intellectual property arguments. People rarely appreciate how fucking wild wild west the internet (even now) really is. Fuckin crawlers, scrapers, AI training all this shit is the smoke and tremors before Mt. St. Helen’s.

            You cant but a pack of gum anymore without agreeing to terms and conditions while at the same time its all but common knowledge none of them hold a lick of value in a court room.

            The best part is normally in life you can have a decent gut feeling the way something will play out. But with this I have no fuckkng clue.

            I mean aren’t half the regulations around spamming emails covered by the FCC while the other half is FTC. Like think about this for a second. We live in 2024 where the internet is connected to implanted medical devices, it’s tracking your driving habits, listening to you jerk off, storing every text message you ever sent, then backing up that plus every picture you ever took but surprisingly do not actually own all because it never leaves the apple servers…etc the point being how in the flying fuck is the there not a single regulatory committee over seeing the internet? IDK maybe it’s because they would have to have open discussion about the very real very terrifying backdoor policy to software. Can’t drop terabytes if child porn on you nemises’ hard drive with out that little loophole in the system.

    • @CrashumbcEnglish
      3•1 month ago

      The controlling board, yes. How many does it take to sign off on final rules?

      FYI the FTC has tens of thousands of employees.